Esperion Files For $70M IPO

PLYMOUTH (WWJ) -- Plymouth-based Esperion Therapeutics Inc. has filed for an initial public stock offering with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

Esperion is seeking to raise up to $70 million.

Esperion is focused on drugs to treat high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, the so-called bad cholesterol, that can be taken in pill form, and which offer better side effect profiles than current statin drugs.

The company plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq stock market under the symbol ESPR. Credit Suisse AG and Citigroup Inc. are lead managers on the offering, which has yet to be priced.

The initial Esperion was founded in 1998 and sold to Pfizer Inc. in 2004 for $1.3 billion, but its product -- which used a different mechanism of action to raise high-density lipoprotein, the so-called good cholesterol -- was never developed for the market. Pfizer later sold the name Esperion and rights to some possible future products back to Roger Newton, who founded the original Esperion.

Esperion announced two weeks ago that it had closed on a $33 million venture funding round.

More at www.esperion.com.